While 7% of the Indian population (around 8,000,000 people) is estimated to suffer from a mental disorder, there is a critical shortage of mental health professionals and facilities to care for the population. The country only has a fourth of the psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses needed to take sufficient care of its massive population. That adds up to 8,000 psychiatrists, 17,000 clinical psychologists, 23,000 psychiatric social workers and 9,000 psychiatric nurses missing from the health care sector. The logistic situation is even worse as there are only 200 beds in psychiatric hospitals against the 30,000 required for the mentally ill. As of now there is one psychiatrist for every 400,000 people in India.

The Indian government in December 2011 proposed the forming of 11 teaching hospitals and called for more post-graduate seats in psychiatry and clinical psychology. They hope this will add 1,700 new qualified mental health professionals each year to try and stem the tide.

Mental health has so far not been considered relevant to global health. While infectious diseases like TB, AIDS, and Malaria receive lot of resources and publicity, there is a void of attention and resources spent on the just as debilitating mental illnesses. In spite of evidence suggesting otherwise – investments in mental health have not yet been considered cost-effective and worthy. This is particularly puzzling considering that these assessments often are performed by countries that invest substantially in domestic mental health care.

Three-quarters of people living with mental health problems now live in the developing world, so the need for action is clear. Some organizations have already recognized this, One Canadian fund - in 2011 – donated $20 million in funding for proposals to improve mental health treatment, expand access to care, and reduce the stigma in developing countries with an objective to support the development of solutions that are effective, low-cost, and accessible to those that need them most. Donor countries and developing countries alike need to focus their efforts in combating both the stigma and the illness associated with mental health disorders.

I completely agree a major reason for this is that mental health prof are concentrated in Indian metros while in the smaller cities there are very few…Maybe telepsychiatry and online help can reduce this gap…

Thanks for your reply Dr. Balakrishnan
It would be fantastic if modern technology could help close the gap, but I would be afraid that these technologies would have a hard time being utilized outside the metro areas.

Other initiatives that have been proposed include educating some doctors in the rural areas with basic knowledge so they’d be able to do a basic diagnosis and then have them report back to actual psychiatric clinics in the metro areas for exact treatment prescriptions.

Also studies have shown that for some diseases a lower dose approach could yield better results as well make treatment more cost effective. (Emsley, Oosthuizen, Joubert, Hawkridge
& Stein 1999)

Thanks for starting up a very interesting coversation which would lead to an exchange of ideas…Surprisingly internet penetration is growing rapidly even outside the metros…We have been getting calls from smaller towns like trichy,raipur,etc…Capacity building off course is as important because of the growing population…We are also working on an E-module for training primary care physicians to make a diagnosis and start basic treatment..

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